EADS chief optimistic Britain won't leave European Union

The boss of aerospace giant EADS last night shrugged off concerns that Britain could leave the EU, saying such a political decision was unlikely to have much bearing on his company’s investment in the UK.

Addressing members of the Royal Aeronautical Society in London, Dr Tom Enders said ‘protectionism is incompatible with innovation’, adding that the free movement of talented people and money was ‘essential to economic prosperity’.

German-born Enders later told the Mail he would regret a British decision to leave the European Union because ‘Europe would not be the same without Britain’.

Optimistic: Dr Tom Enders shrugged off worries over a UK exit from the EU

He said he remained optimistic it
would not happen, but if it did ‘I have no doubt that it would end up
with British operations like we do today. The wings are made in the UK
and without wings our birds do not fly’.

EADS, which will be rebranded Airbus from January, employs 17,500 workers in Britain.

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Earlier this week the company announced it was consolidating its defence, cyber-security and space operations to save money.

While
most of the almost 6,000 jobs being cut will go in Germany and France,
up to 700 posts will be axed in Britain, including 450 full-time roles.

Enders said the logic
of the restructuring was to make EADS more competitive as global
defence firms competed for a slice of shrinking military spending. He
said he expected no new major defence programmes to be launched for at
least the rest of this decade.